Well that was quite a decision handed down to us by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last night

Well that was quite a decision handed down to us by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last night. Bars and restaurants were packed around the state, and all thoughts of recommended social distancing/masks that we’ve been reading about for months were discarded.

Although there is lots to say about that subject, I wanted to continue the first part of my four part series on why Trump, Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature, and Rob Swearingen are so deadly wrong on reopening Wisconsin‘s economy.

Let’s focus on the “curve” today. What does the scientific community say about what the "curve" needs to look like in order to re-open?

We are hearing from the scientific community that it’s only wise to try to fully re-open economies when countries are seeing fewer daily cases of people getting the virus. When this happens, you see the curve of the graph turn downward. In the first graph below, there are 38 countries where the curve has turned downward and those countries are on a path towards containing the virus. Unfortunately out of the 42 countries on this graph, the US is 1 of 4 in which the curve is still growing.

That fact in and of itself is clearly indicative that Trump’s leadership is a disaster. But that’s at the federal level, what does that mean for residents in Wisconsin’s Northwoods?

The number of reported cases in Wisconsin is over 10k, the number of reported cases in Illinois is over 85k, and the curves are flattening but not turning downward. Neither Wisconsin nor Illinois has contained the virus yet, and as most of my neighbors know, about half of the people who visit Minocqua each summer are from Illinois. As a restaurant owner, I love those tourists, but not having contained the virus means we have a scary proposition for us this summer with our limited healthcare resources.

Mitigation and containment of this virus are basic first steps, then testing and contact tracing, which I will expand upon in future posts, are the next steps needed to safely re-open economies.

We haven’t even hit that first target of containment yet, But the Republican Legislature and Rob Swearingen seemingly don’t care about that.

Ignoring this basic understanding of the “curve“ in order to score political points is gross negligence and harmful to us here in the Northwoods. Rob Swearingen needs to be held accountable for putting us in harm’s way.

If you agree, please share widely, and please share to those who may often vote Republican, but who still think safety and science should guide our path forward.

Written by Kirk Bangstad on 05/14/20